Sunday, March 24, 2013

Traveling with a celebrity

I’ve often wondered what it would be like to be Justin Beber
or Nelson Mandela – where you can’t go anywhere without big crowds of adoring
fans forming. I feel like this trip has given me a small insight how these
celebrities experience fame. Sometimes I think that Brendon and I are just
Oren’s entourage. Everywhere we go, people flock to our blue eyed, white
skinned, bald little baby. And lucky for them, he appears to be a people person
so he offers them big smiles and happily accepts being held by just about
every stranger out there.

There are incredible benefits to this. Thais and Laotians
love babies and the family structure is very important. This means that we are
often elevated to a different level of traveler and perhaps given opportunities
that the 20-somethings don’t get. For example: we have yet to have a meal out
together where the wait staff don’t take our baby away to explore the kitchen
or a random fountain so that we can eat uninterrupted. It also means the locals
want to talk with us. They cross busy roads just to ask us about our baby. To
facilitate interactions between us and the locals, I’ve learnt some Lao and
Thai – enough to convey the most crucial information – “he’s a boy”, “6months
old”, “his name is Oren”, “he’s [insert] tired, hungry, thirsty, hot”, “do you
have children?” “he smiles a lot” and most importantly “peek-a-boo”.

Yes, that is a monk taking a picture of Oren.

We’re now in Laos and have been traveling for a little more
than a month. I feel like we have really hit our groove. We’ve figured out how
to get Oren to sleep just about everywhere which now make long days pretty
feasible. Not only are we more relaxed than we’ve been in years, we have time
to feel inspired and to reflect on what’s next for our family. It really is pretty luxurious.

Napping on a picnic table by the Mekong and being put to sleep by a waterfall.

It really is somewhat ironic that we
chose Laos - a country where malaria and dengue fever is endemic. It also
happens to be the most heavily bombed place in the world. We
forfeited the excellent health care system and first world amenities of
Thailand (that convinced us to travel overseas with a baby in the first place)
for the slow paced, luscious, ceremonial country of Laos.

A few days ago our celebrity baby celebrated
his 6 months on the planet. We rented a scooter and took the back roads to an
elephant orphanage. There, Oren got to meet a beautiful mamma elephant who used
to work in the lumber industry. Stopped in a small village on the way back for
some noodle soup and were swarmed by just about everyone that lived there
(refer to above picture). Life is pretty good.

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